BOSQUE DE MUERTE

Bosque de muerte

BOSQUE DE MUERTE (or FOREST OF DEATH) is a perfect clone of a mid-1980s slasher film. I was actually surprised to find out that it wasn't a mid-1980s slasher film at all. It was made in 1993. So surprised was I by this fact that I actually spent a few hours browsing around the web trying to find out whether or not the IMDB release date was incorrect. It has the look and feel of virtually every made-for-video slasher film that was released in the 1980s, right down to the costuming, the synth score and the scripting. It seemed absurd to think that this could have been made at any other time. Well, I was wrong. It WAS made in 1993, and if, by some chance, the filmmakers were to come out right now and proclaim their film an attempt to recapture the look of the 1980s body count picture, I'd say "job well done".


First, a bit of a synopsis. Three couples head off into the woods for a weekend getaway. Before they reach their destination - a house owned by the father of one of the girls - they have some car trouble. They stop at a gas station to try and buy some antifreeze. There they meet Jaguar, a brooding forest ranger who just nabbed - and maimed - some people chopping down trees on his wilderness preserve turf. Jaguar, a childhood acquaintance of one of the girls, Silvia, gives them some assistance and soon they're on their way. Everything goes smoothly once they arrive at Silvia's house in the woods and the couples go about riding horses, fishing, swimming and having fun. Then one of their friends goes missing. Then another. And another. Etc. Etc.


Bosque de muerte

So we have a set-up instantly familiar to slasher film fans, right? Our cast even fits the bill for this kind of film: young, dumb, fit and flirty. The problem is, it doesn't really become a slasher film until the last 20 minutes. Literally nothing happens for the first hour. We spend a lot of time watching these people do all kinds of things except scream and die, two of the requisite elements of any slasher film. That isn't to say the first hour is boring. It isn't really. I was quite shocked to find that an hour had gone by before the killings started to happen. I honestly didn't think the film had been on for that long. Everything breezed by without a hitch. I wasn't bored by the film and I wasn't - as is usually the case with slasher films - crying out for someone to get mutilated. To be honest, I kind of forgot that I was watching a horror film. So when the first friend went missing and the POV heavy-breather shots began to proliferate, I thought to myself "oh yeah, I'm watching a slasher film".


Bosque de muerte

This is a film that I have no real opinion of. It's kind of hard to dislike it. The characters are all likeable enough and there are a few decent shots here and there. The score is pleasantly cheesy at times and the dialogue is sprinkled with a few good zingers. The slasher elements, when they finally take hold, are well-utilized and executed with a fair amount of energy. But there's the whole issue of the film not really amounting to anything. Nothing much happens during the course of the film and the action the film does contain is compressed into the final 20 minutes. I just sat there watching it, blinked my eyes a few times, and it was done. I turned it off, said "alright then" and popped in another movie. It left no real impression on me, but it didn't feel like a total waste of time. I don't know what to make of it, really. It was just a piece of innocuous, harmless fluff with a bit of charisma to it.


Bosque de muerte

I don't know much about the history of Mexican horror films post-1960s, but I'm sure lots of these films were made during the 1980s and 1990s. Though BOSQUE DE MUERTE takes place in Mexico and has plenty of Mexican flair to it, it could have easily been a Spanish, American or Italian effort. I imagine this would have been a killer camp classic had it been made in the vein of most Italian/Spanish cheapies. You could easily take Jorge Reynoso out of the picture - which might not have been a bad thing to do anyway; the man has one and only one expression on his face throughout the whole film - and replace him with Christopher George. Then swap out Sergio Bustamante for Cameron Mitchell, replace the synth score for something more pop-rock driven and toss a shower scene or two in. A few simple substitutions and BOSQUE DE MUERTE suddenly becomes something insanely awesome. As it stands, it's merely a decent hour and a half of entertainment, not really memorable, but not really poor either.


Recommended.